^ On
a 25 April:2010 (Good Shepherd Sunday = 4th Sunday of Easter) 47th
World Day of Prayer for Vocations. — Advance message
of Pope Benedict XVI (13 November 2009)

2003 Late
the previous day GenVec (GNVC) announced that it has signed an expansion
to its existing agreement with the Vaccine Research Center of the National
Institutes of Health to co-develope a vaccine for SARS. On the NASDAQ, at
the opening, shares of GNVC jump to $3.00 from their previous close of $1.53,
then decline to an intraday low of $2.22 and close at $2.68, with 7.2 million
of its 22.7 million shares traded this day. GNVC had traded as low as $0.90
as recently as 04 April 2003, and as high as $4.42 on 12 December 2002 and
$11.75 on 12 December 2000. [2~year price chart >]

^
2001 US sides with brutal countries on death penalty.
The UN Human Rights Commission votes 27-18
in favor of a moratorium on the death penalty. Seven countries abstain,
and one  Liberia  is absent. The US and China voted against
the moratorium. [Countries
listed according to attitude towards death penalty] [Community
of Sant'Egidio] No Western European country has the death penalty. Among
those that do, besides the US and China, are such countries as Russia, Lybia,
Afghanistan, Congo (DR), Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Laos, Lebanon, Mongolia, Myanmar,
North Korea, Palestinian Authority, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Viet
Nam, Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe.From Catholic Catechism
(1977): 2267. Assuming that the guilty
party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional
teaching of the church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if
this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against
the unjust aggressor. If, however, nonlethal means are sufficient to defend
and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself
to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions
of the common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human
person. Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the
state has for effectively preventing crime by rendering one who has committed
an offense incapable of doing harmwithout definitively taking away
from him the possibility of redeeming himselfthe cases in which the
execution of the offender is an absolute necessity are very rare, if not
practically nonexistent.

^2001 Sick doctor rescued from South Pole.
A small medevac propeller plane of Raytheon
Polar Services, fitted with skis for an icy landing started out the
previous day to the South Pole to rescue a sick US doctor, setting out after
two days of howling winds and blinding snow eased enough to attempt the
harrowing journey to the bottom of the world. Flying into the pitch black
of the polar winter, the eight-seat Twin Otter began its 10-hour flight
from the UK's Rothera base, on an island half-way up the west coast of the
Antarctic peninsula across from Chile, to the pole, at 14:34 UT on 24 April.
Even with the improved weather, the temperatures at the South Pole was at
61ºC. The visibility had improved to 8 km miles with gusting
winds and blowing snow. [Current
Rothera weather forecast] It was
the second dramatic rescue attempt in 24 hours: Earlier on 24 April, a New
Zealand air force plane successfully evacuated 11 US staffers from a research
station on the other side of the frozen continent.
Flights to the South Pole are normally halted from late February until November
because of the extreme cold and darkness. But health emergencies at the
isolated, frigid Antarctic outposts forced rescuers in both operations to
make the dangerous flights. Dr. Ronald S.
Shemenski, 59, at the Amundsen Scott-South Pole station, the only physician
among 50 researchers working at the station, had recently suffered a gall
bladder attack and had the potentially life-threatening condition known
as pancreatitis. A registered nurse at the South Pole helped take ultrasound
images that were sent back to doctors in the US for diagnosis. Pancreatitis
is the inflammation of the pancreas and can happen when a gallstone passes
down the bile duct, irritating the gland. Shemenski needed surgery and had
to be evacuated before harsher winter weather set it, making a future rescue
impossible. In such a case, most people would have considered treatment
within three weeks after the condition was diagnosed.
The rescue team included two pilots, a flight engineer, and a replacement
physician (Dr. Betty Carlisle) for the polar station. The plane arrives
at 00:02 UT on 25 April with the dark, bone-chilling cold with a sheet of
ice as a runway and no tower to guide the landing. Barrels of flaming debris
are set up to light the runway. The cold-resistant plane refuels, its crew
rests, and at 16:47 UT heads back to Rothera, 2500 km away, where it would
arrive at 00:52 UT on 26 April. From there another plane would fly Dr. Shemenski
in about 6 hours the 1480 km to Punta Arenas, where he would board a commercial
flight to the US. This is the second
time in two years that a doctor has been plucked from the pole in a medical
emergency. On 16 October 1999, Dr. Jerri Nielsen, 47,  then the only
physician at the Amundsen Scott-South Pole Station  was evacuated
nearly five months after she discovered on herself a cancerous breast tumor,
which she had been treating with herself with medical supplies dropped during
a daring mission in July 1999  the middle of winter in Antarctica,
when it was impossible for a plane to land there. The supplies allowed her
to perform her own biopsy and begin administering chemotherapy. She e-mailed
photographs of slide samples of the tumor to doctors in the United States.
Nielsen's rescue was possible only after the winter relented slightly and
it became warm enough (50ºC) to risk the flight,
possibly the earliest post-winter flight to the South Pole.
On the opposite coast from the Rothera base, rescuers were also forced to
move quickly to evacuate four ill Americans at McMurdo Antarctic Base. In
a 15-hour round-trip journey from Christchurch, New Zealand, a C130 Hercules
landed on McMurdo's ice runway, spending just one hour on the ground to
pick up the evacuees and refuel. Engines were kept running to prevent them
freezing in the 30ºC air. The sick Americans were joined on the
flight by seven other US staffers, returning because of family emergencies.
Two of the evacuees were suffering from critical conditions, and were taken
to a hospital in Christchurch Antarctica
is the third-largest continent, half again the size of the United States.
Nations including the United States, Britain, New Zealand, and Argentina
carry out experiments at bases dotted across the continent. They are regularly
serviced by flights during the summer months but batten down the hatches
and reduce staffing for the polar winter. Scientific research at the South
Pole Station ranges from the study of the origins of the universe to the
behavior of the "ozone hole."

^
1996 US budget agreement.
The US Senate approves the spending for the upcoming fiscal year.
Never ones to move swiftly on budget or spending agreements, White
House officials and Republican leaders had spent seven months wrangling
over a bill. But the disastrous budget negotiations from the previous
year, which had resulted in a temporary shutdown of the government
that stained the reputations of key Republican legislators, no doubt
helped speed the compromise. The budget deal, along with the Senate's
"overwhelming" approval of the bill (the final vote tallied eighty-eight
to eleven in favor of the legislation), triggered a wave of optimism
on Capital Hill. Newt Gingrich, the occasionally cantankerous House
Speaker, called the spending deal a "yardstick," while White House
spokesman Mike McCurry said that President Clinton and his staff saw
"some glimmer of hope" in the Republicans and Democrats' ability to
lay down their swords and work out a compromise.

1996 A day after the PLO annulled clauses calling for Israel's
destruction, Israel's governing Labor Party abandoned its long-standing
opposition to a Palestinian state.1996 Ford Motor
Co. announced a recall of about 8 million cars, minivans and pickups because
of an ignition switch fire hazard.1996 The FCC proposes
setting aside a free portion of the radio spectrum for various types of
communications. The plan would facilitate wireless transmission of electronic
mail and other data.1993 Se aprueba la nueva
Constitución de Rusia mediante referéndum y Boris Nikolaievich
Yeltsin pierde los comicios legislativos celebrados el mismo día.1992 Dimite el presidente italiano, Francesco Cossiga.1992 Islamic forces in Afghanistan take control of most
of Kabul following the collapse of the Communist government.

1991
Twenty-two priority technologies.
The White House released a list of twenty-two key technologies that
it considered priorities for economic prosperity and national security.
In the past, the White House had blocked federal efforts to advance
commercial technology, considering it an interference with the free
market. For instance, the Bush administration had blocked funding
for high-definition television. However, the White House technology
list indicated a potential increase in federal funding for these areas,
which included computers, software, microelectronics, high-definition
displays, biotechnology, aeronautics, and more.

1990 Violeta Barrios de Chamorro is inaugurated for a
6 year term as Nicaragua's president, ending 11 years of leftist Sandinista
rule under Daniel Ortega Saavedra.

^
1990 Hubble space telescope placed
in orbit. The
crew of the US space shuttle Discovery placed the Hubble
Space Telescope, a long-term space-based observatory, into a low orbit
around the earth. The space telescope, conceived in the 1940s, designed
in the 1970s, and built in the 1980s, would give astronomers an unparalleled
view of the solar system, the galaxy, and the universe. Free of atmospheric
distortions, Hubble has a resolution ten times that of ground-based
observatories. About the size of a bus, the telescope is solar-powered
and orbits the earth once every ninety-seven minutes. Initially, NASA
suffered a major setback in the operation of Hubble when a spherical
aberration in one of its major lenses was discovered. However, in
December of 1993, a repair mission by space-walking shuttle astronauts
was an enormous success, and Hubble began sending back its first breathtaking
images of the universe. Among its many astronomical achievements,
Hubble has been used to monitor weather conditions on Mars, record
a comet's collision with Jupiter, provide the first direct look at
the surface of Pluto, view distant galaxies and gas clouds, witness
planetary systems under construction, uncover the first convincing
evidence of the existence of super-massive black holes in space, and
see billions of years into the universe's past.

^
1989 Freed 21 years after being
wrongfully sentenced to death
James Richardson walks out of a Florida prison 21 years after being
wrongfully convicted of killing his seven children. Special prosecutor
Janet Reno agreed to the release after evidence showed that the conviction
resulted from misconduct by the prosecutor. In addition, neighbor
Betsy Reese had confessed to the crime to a nursing home employee.
On 25 October 1967, James
and his wife, Annie, were working in a field picking fruit when Reese
came over to heat up a meal for the Richardsons' seven kids. After
they finished eating, the children began foaming at the mouth. They
were dead moments later from poisoning. Police found that the rice
and beans had been laced with the pesticide parathion. Reese then
reported that she saw a bag of the poison in a shed behind the Richardsons'
home. Police discovered that an insurance salesman had visited the
Richardsons' home shortly before the poisoning and that James had
discussed life insurance for the entire family. The prosecution made
a big deal of this fact at trial but neglected to inform the jury
that the salesman had made an unsolicited visit and that Richardson
never bought the insurance because he couldn't afford the premiums.
The prosecutors also introduced three
convicts who claimed that Richardson had admitted to the mass murder
while he was being held in jail. It was later revealed that this testimony
was manufactured in return for leniency on their sentences. The jurors
were not told about Reese's criminal history. She was on parole at
the time for killing her second husband and was suspected of killing
her first husband with poison. After less than an hour and a half
of deliberation, the jury convicted Richardson and sentenced him to
the electric chair. After his
release in 1989, Richardson was honored as Father of the Year by a
Catholic church in Chicago, and he moved into a diet clinic run by
comedian Dick Gregory. The governor of Florida ordered an investigation
into the prosecutor's office to discover what prompted the miscarriage
of justice.

1988 In Israel, US immigrant factory worker John Demjanuk
is sentenced to death (wrongly?) as being Nazi war criminal concentration
camp guard Ivan the Terrible.

^
1988Gone with the Wind sequel
rights sold for $5 million.
Publishing rights to a Gone with the Wind sequel are sold to Warner
Books for $4'940'000. The book, by Alexandra Ripley, was published in 1991.
Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, was published in 1936
and sold 25 million copies, making it one of the bestsellinging books of
all time. The movie, released in 1939, became one of the world's best-loved
films, winning several Oscars, including Best Picture. Ripley's novel, Scarlett:
The Sequel to Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, topped the bestseller
list despite a cold response from critics and was made into a TV miniseries.The Wind Done Gone without rights in 2001.
A federal judge on 20 April 2001 blocked the publication of black African-American
Randall's novel The Wind Done Gone which he said borrows too liberally
from Gone With the Wind and infringes on the copyright of Margaret
Mitchell's classic novel. Randall, whose book was scheduled for publication
in June 2001, argued that her story, told from the point of view of Scarlett
O'Hara's mulatto half-sister on the plantation Tata (Tara in Gone With
the Wind) , was a political parody. Attorneys for Mitchell's estate
had argued in a hearing on 18 April 2001 that the issue was not one of free
speech as Randall and the publisher claimed, but about providing protection
to authors and other creative artists.I was born May 25, 1845,
at half-past seven in the morning into slavery on a cotton farm a day's
ride from Atlanta. My father, Planter, was the master of the place; my mother
was the Mammy. My half-sister, Other, was the belle of five counties. She
was not beautiful, but men seldom recognized this, caught up in the cloud
of commotion and scent in which she moved.  From Page 1 of The
Wind Done Gone.

^
1983 Andropov writes to a US fifth-grader.
The Soviet Union releases a letter that Russian
leader Yuri Andropov wrote to Samantha Smith, a US fifth-grader, born on
29 June 1972. This rather unusual piece of Soviet propaganda was in direct
response to President Ronald Reagan's vigorous attacks on what he called
"the evil empire" of the Soviet Union. In 1983, President Reagan was in
the midst of a harsh rhetorical campaign against the Soviet Union. A passionate
anticommunist, President Reagan called for massive increases in US defense
spending to meet the perceived Soviet threat. In Russia, however, events
were leading to a different Soviet approach to the West. In 1982, long-time
leader Leonid Brezhnev died; Yuri Andropov was his successor. While Andropov
was not radical in his approach to politics and economics, he did seem to
sincerely desire a better relationship with the United States. In an attempt
to blunt the Reagan attacks, the Soviet government on released a letter
that Andropov had written in response to one sent by Samantha Smith, a fifth-grade
student from Manchester, Maine. Smith had written the Soviet leader as part
of a class assignment, one that was common enough for students in the Cold
War years. Most of these missives received a form letter response, if any
at all, but Andropov answered Smith's letter personally. He explained that
the Soviet Union had suffered horrible losses in World War II, an experience
that convinced the Russian people that they wanted to "live in peace, to
trade and cooperate with all our neighbors on the globe, no matter how close
or far away they are, and, certainly, with such a great country as the United
States of America." In response to Smith's question about whether the Soviet
Union wished to prevent nuclear war, Andropov declared, "Yes, Samantha,
we in the Soviet Union are endeavoring and doing everything so that there
will be no war between our two countries, so that there will be no war at
all on earth. This is the wish of everyone in the Soviet Union. That's what
we were taught to do by Vladimir Lenin, the great founder of our state."
He vowed that Russia would "never, but never, be the first to use nuclear
weapons against any country." Andropov complimented Smith, comparing her
to the spunky character of Becky from the Mark Twain novel, The Adventures
of Tom Sawyer. "All kids in our country, boys and girls alike, know and
love this book," he added. Andropov ended by inviting Samantha and her parents
to visit the Soviet Union. In July 1983, Samantha accepted the invitation
and flew to Russia for a three-week tour. Soviet propaganda had never been
known for its human qualities. Generally speaking, it was given to heavy-handed
diatribes and communist cliches. In his public relations duel with Reagan
 the US president known as the "Great Communicator"  Andropov
tried something different by assuming a folksy, almost grandfatherly approach.
Whether this would have borne fruit is unknown; just a year later, Andropov
died. Tragically, Samantha Smith, aged 13, died just one year after Andropov.
On 07 July 1983, Samantha, now 11, would go
on her visit to the USSR. Some months before, when she was still 10, she
had written a letter to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov asking for peace. At
first Samantha heard nothing back. Then she found out that portions of her
letter had been published in the Communist newspaper Pravda. A few weeks
later she received a letter from Andropov inviting her to visit the Soviet
Union. For two weeks she would tour
the country: Moscow, Leningrad, Red Square, meet with the first woman in
space, Valentina Tereshkova, , and spent several days at a Soviet youth
camp on the Black Sea. Through it all the US and Soviet media followed her
every step. Samantha didn’t stop after
her tour of Russia. She wrote a book called Journey to the Soviet Union
in which she wrote, “I dedicate this book to the children of the world.
They know that peace is always possible.” She then went to Japan and met
with the prime minister and spoke at an international children’s symposium.
She also hosted a special for the Disney channel during the 1984 presidential
campaigns to educate kids about the candidates, politics and the government.
Samantha heard the North American promise they would never start a nuclear
war; she also heard how the voices from the Kremlin swore that neither would
they. And then, with the clear and simple logic of her eleven years she
asked, “they why do you both go on making missiles and aiming them at each
other?” Samantha Smith died with her
father in a plane crash on 25 August 1985, during a break in the filming
of the TV series Lime Street. After her death, the Soviet Union
issued a stamp in her honor. An echinopsis
flower was named after her.

Samantha
Smith's letter:
Dear Mr. Andropov,
My name is Samantha Smith. I am ten years old. Congratulations on your new
job. I have been worrying about Russia and the United States getting into
a nuclear war. Are you going to vote to have a war or not? If you aren’t
please tell me how you are going to help to not have a war. This question
you do not have to answer, but I would like to know why you want to conquer
the world or at least our country. God made the world for us to live together
in peace and not to fight.
Sincerely,
Samantha Smith Andropov's answer :

Dear Samantha, I received
your letter, which is like many others that have reached me recently
from your country and from other countries around the world.
It seems to me  I can tell by your
letter  that you are a courageous and honest girl, resembling
Becky, the friend of Tom Sawyer in the famous book of your compatriot
Mark Twain. This book is well known and loved in our country by all
boys and girls.
You write that you are anxious about
whether there will be a nuclear war between our two countries. And you
ask are we doing anything so that war will not break out.
Your question is the most important of
those that every thinking man can pose. I will reply to you seriously
and honestly.
Yes, Samantha, we in the Soviet Union
are trying to do everything so that there will not be war on earth.
This is what every Soviet man wants. This is what the great founder
of our state, Vladimir Lenin, taught us.
Soviet people well know what a terrible
thing war is. Forty-two years ago, Nazi Germany, which strived for supremacy
over the whole world, attacked our country, burned and destroyed many
thousands of our towns and villages, killed millions of Soviet men,
women and children.
In that war, which ended with our victory,
we were in alliance with the United States: together we fought for the
liberation of many people from the Nazi invaders. I hope that you known
about this from your history lessons in school. And today we want very
much to live in peace, to trade and cooperate with all our neighbors
on this earth - with those far away and those near by. And certainly
with such a great country as the United States of America.
In America and in our country there are
nuclear weapons - terrible weapons that can kill millions of people
in an instant. But we do not want them to be ever used. That’s precisely
why the Soviet Union solemnly declared throughout the entire world that
never - never - will it use nuclear weapons first against any country.
In general we propose to discontinue further production of them and
to proceed to the abolition of all the stockpiles on earth.
It seems to me that this is a sufficient
answer to your second question:
“Why do you want to wage war against the whole world or at least the
United States?” We want nothing of the kind. No one in our country 
neither workers, peasants, writers nor doctors, neither grown-ups nor
children, nor members of the government  want either a big or
“little” war.
We want peace  there is something
that we are occupied with: growing wheat, building and inventing, writing
books and flying into space. We want peace for ourselves and for all
peoples of the planet. For our children and for you, Samantha.
I invite you, if your parents will let
you, to come to our country, the best time being this summer. You will
find out about our country, meet with your contemporaries, visit an
international children’s camp  “Artek”  on the sea. And
see for yourself: in the Soviet Union  everyone is for peace and
friendship among peoples.
Thank you for your letter. I wish you
all the best in your young life.

^1972 North Vietnamese
Army close to cutting South Vietnam in two.
Hanoi's 320th Division drives 5000
South Vietnamese troops into retreat and traps about 2500 others in
a border outpost northwest of Kontum in the Central Highlands. This
was part of the ongoing North Vietnamese Nguyen Hue Offensive, also
known as the "Easter Offensive," which included an invasion by 120'000
North Vietnamese troops. The offensive was based on three objectives:
Quang Tri in the north, Kontum in the Central Highlands, and An Loc
in the south  just 105 km north of Saigon. If successful, the
attack at Kontum would effectively cut South Vietnam in two across
the Central Highlands, giving North Vietnam control of the northern
half of South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese defenders were able to
hold out and prevent this from happening.

1971 US canal rights in Nicaragua and rights to Corn Islands
expire.1971 Se proclama la República
de Bangladesh.1971 Franz Jonas es reelegido
presidente federal de Austria.1967 Britain grants
internal self-government to Swaziland.1967 Colorado
Governor John Love signs the first law legalizing abortion in the US. The
law is limited to therapeutic abortions when agreed to, unanimously,
by a panel of three physicians. [no love there for the unborn child]

^
1964 Westmoreland to head US
military in Vietnam. US
President Lyndon B. Johnson announces that General. William Westmoreland
will replace Gen. Paul Harkins as head of US Military Assistance Command
Vietnam (MACV) as of 20 June. The assignment would put Westmoreland
in charge of all American military forces in Vietnam. One of the war's
most controversial figures, General Westmoreland was given many honors
when the fighting was going well, but when the war turned sour, many
Americans saw him as a cause of US problems in Vietnam. Negative feeling
about Westmoreland grew particularly strong following the Tet Offensive
of 1968, when he had requested a large number of additional troops
for deployment to Vietnam. On 22 March 1968, President Johnson
announced that Westmoreland would leave South Vietnam to take on the
post of Army Chief of Staff; Gen. Creighton Abrams replaced him as
the senior US commander in South Vietnam.

^
1960 US sub completes global
underwater journey.
The USS. Triton, a nuclear-powered submarine, completed the first
global circumnavigation by a submerged submarine. The Triton, commanded
by Captain Edward L. Beach and featuring a crew of thirteen officers
and 135 men, departed New London, Connecticut, on 16 February
1960. The submarine was 136 meters long and weighed 7750 tons when
submerged. On 24 February, the Triton crossed the equator, and
on 25 April, completed its around-the-world journey, having traveled
67'000 km in eighty-four days. The hull of the submarine was submerged
during the entire trip, although the upper mast broached the surface
twice for defense reasons. From 1957 to 1958, another American submarine
had circumnavigated the earth's oceans, but the vessel was forced
to surface numerous times for refueling. With the completion of the
world's first nuclear-powered submarine in 1954, submarines now had
the potential to remain submerged for nearly unlimited periods of
time.

1953
US Senator Wayne Morse ends the longest speech in US Senate history. The
speech on the Offshore Oil Bill lasted 22 hours and 26 minutes. [they should
have nicknamed him Phil E. Buster]1953Nature
magazine (171, 737-738) publishes a
letter written on 02 April 1953 by James Dewey Watson [06 Apr 1928~]
and Francis Harry Compton Crick [08 Jun 1916~], in which for the first time
is proposed the correct double-helix structure
of DNA, which, they write, “suggests a possible copying mechanism
for the genetic material”. The letter includes this diagram >
[How
they made the discovery, not theirs alone]1947
Ho Chi Minh propone negociaciones a Francia. Los socialistas
japoneses triunfan en las elecciones parlamentarias.1945
Last Boeing B-17 attack against Nazi Germany.^
1945 US and USSR troops meet; Berlin encircled.
During World War II, American and Soviet
troops met for the first time at Leckwitz on the Elbe River, less than a
160 km south of Berlin. The Allied troops, made up of patrols from the US
273rd Infantry Regiment and advance Soviet troops from the eastern front,
joyously shook hands in celebration of the successes of their respective
offensives against Nazi Germany. With
Germany just a few weeks away from collapse, the Americans were driving
into the southern part of Germany, hoping to prevent a last stand by the
German army in the heavily fortified "National Redoubt" in the Alps. The
Soviets, meanwhile, were besieging the German capital of Berlin while pushing
toward the Elbe River, the boundary of the postwar occupation zone agreed
to at the Allied conference at Yalta in February.
On the day that the first advance US and Red Army troops met on the Elbe,
the two main Soviet armies, totaling some two million soldiers, converged
around Berlin, and the city was completely encircled. Just six days later,
with Soviet troops in Berlin a few blocks from his bunker under the German
Chancellery, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler committed suicide. The next day, more
Nazi leaders followed him [to Hell?], and on 02 May, resistance against
the Soviets ended in Berlin. Meanwhile, the Americans liberated Austria
and parts of Czechoslovakia, and on 07 May, Germany signed its unconditional
surrender, ending six years of murder and devastation in Europe. The next
day, millions of people across Europe and the world celebrated "V-E Day,"
or "Victory in Europe." Eight
Russian armies completely encircle Berlin, linking up with the US First
Army patrol, first on the western bank of the Elbe, then later at Torgau.
Germany is, for all intents and purposes, Allied territory. The Allies sounded
the death knell of their common enemy by celebrating. In Moscow, news of
the link-up between the two armies resulted in a 324-gun salute; in New
York, crowds burst into song and dance in the middle of Times Square. Among
the Soviet commanders who participated in this historic meeting of the two
armies was the renowned Russian Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov, who warned a skeptical
Stalin as early as June 1941 that Germany posed a serious threat to the
Soviet Union. Zhukov would become invaluable in battling German forces within
Russia (Stalingrad and Moscow) and without. It was also Zhukov who would
demand and receive unconditional surrender of Berlin from German General
Krebs less than a week after encircling the German capital. At the end of
the war, Zhukov was awarded a military medal of honor from Great Britain
La défaite allemande à Moscou et le débarquement américain en Normandie
(06 Jun 1944) ont sonné la fin du führer. Désormais, la défaite allemande
n'était plus qu'une question de temps. Au mois d'avril 1945, tout va se
précipiter. Le 25, Américains et Soviétiques qui sont entrés en Allemagne
font leur jonction dans une petite ville des bords de l'Elbe, Torgau, à
quelques kilomètres de Leipzig. Une partie de l'Allemagne nazie est donc
occupée. Américains et Britanniques ne sont plus qu'à une centaine de kilomètres
de la capitale Berlin, mais les Soviétiques sont déjà aux portes de la ville.
Ils entreront à Berlin le 30 Apr 1945 et, suprême affront pour Hitler, le
drapeau rouge flottera le soir même sur le Reichstag, le Parlement de la
capitale nazie. Ce même jour, Adolf Hitler se suicide dans son bunker. Sa
compagne, Eva Braun, en fera de même ainsi que certains généraux qui seront
avec lui. Les autres seront jugés la même année par le tribunal de Nuremberg
lors du procès des criminels de guerre, et exécutés. Certains seront rattrapés
par l'Histoire plusieurs années après comme Klaus Barbie, l'ancien chef
de la Gestapo, qui ne sera jugé que le 04 Jul 1987 en France et condamné
à la réclusion à perpétuité. L'Allemagne vaincue sera occupée par ses vainqueurs
et partagée en deux Etats. La Seconde Guerre mondiale aura fait près de
40 millions de morts, dont 20 millions en URSS qui aura payé le prix le
plus lourd pour abattre le nazisme.
1945 Estalla la insurrección partisana
en Italia del Norte, que condena a los dirigentes fascistas y proclama la
democracia en el país.1943 La URSS
y el Gobierno polaco en el exilio londinense rompen sus relaciones diplomáticas,
tras el masacre de Katyn.1940 Las tropas alemanas
llegan a las puertas de Atenas durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial.1939 En un campo de concentración de Pau (Francia)
se descubren 25 mujeres disfrazadas de milicianos rojos. 1939
Las mujeres gallegas piden para el caudillo el principado de Santiago.1938 Gran Bretaña e Irlanda firman un acuerdo
comercial, militar y económico. 1938
El general Alberto Enríquez Gallo dicta una ley electoral para Ecuador.

^1898US
responds to Spain's declaration of war
The Spanish-American War officially began the day before, when the
Spanish refused US demands to withdrawal from Cuba and declared war
against the United States. That same day, US President William McKinley
authorized US Admiral George Dewey, in command of the US Pacific fleet,
to leave Hong Kong and attack Spanish-held Manila in the Philippines.
Spain's brutal response to the
Cuban rebellion against Spanish rule, the mysterious explosion of
the US battleship Maine in Havana harbor, and the heavy losses to
American investment caused by the Cuban conflict, were all factors
that intensified US feeling against Spain. In late April, the US Congress
prepared for war; adopting joint congressional resolutions demanding
a Spanish withdrawal from Cuba and authorizing President McKinley
to use force. On 23 April,
President McKinley asked for 125'000 volunteers to fight against Spain,
and the next day Spain issued a declaration of war. One week later,
the US Navy under Admiral George Dewey won a decisive victory over
the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay in the Philippines, and on 11 June,
six hundred US marines landed at Guantanamo, Cuba. In Cuba, US forces,
featuring the Theodore Roosevelt-led cavalry regiment known as the
"Rough Riders," triumphed at the battles of El Caney and San Juan
Heights, and on 03 July, the remaining Spanish fleet was destroyed
near Santiago de Cuba. On 17 July, nearly 25'000 Spanish soldiers
surrendered at Santiago de Cuba, and the war effectively came to an
end. An armistice was signed on 12 August, and representatives were
sent to Paris, France, to arrange peace. On 10 December, the
Treaty of Paris was signed, officially ending the Spanish-American
war, virtually dissolving the once-proud Spanish Empire, and granting
the United States its first overseas empire. Puerto Rico, Guam, and
the Philippines were ceded to the United States, and Cuba became a
US protectorate. Hawaii, an independent republic run by American expatriates
since 1894, was also formally annexed during the Spanish-American
War.

^
1859 Construction of the Suez Canal begins.
In Egypt, ground is broken for the
Suez Canal, an artificial waterway intended to stretch 163 km across
the Isthmus of Suez and connect the Mediterranean and the Red seas.
The massive construction project, organized by French diplomat and
entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps, took over a decade to complete.
Opened for navigation on 17 November 1859, the canal ran from
Port Said in the north to Suez in the south, and rapidly became one
of the world's most heavily traveled shipping lanes.
France and England took increasing interest in Egypt after the completion
of the canal, and in 1882 British troops invaded Egypt, beginning
a forty-year occupation of the country. In 1922, Britain recognized
the sovereignty of Egypt, but retained control of the Suez Canal.
During the early 1950s, Egyptian nationalists
rioted in the Suez Canal Zone and organized attacks on British troops,
and in 1956 Egyptian Prime Minister Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized
the canal, subsequently barring British, French, and Israeli shipping.
In response, Israeli forces under General Moshe Dayan seized the Gaza
Strip and drove through the Sinai to the east bank of the Suez Canal.
Two days later, Britain and France entered the conflict in a coalition
with Israel, and demanded the immediate evacuation of Egypt from the
Suez Canal. American and U.N. pressure forced the coalition to halt
the hostilities and a U.N. emergency force was sent to occupy the
Canal Zone, eventually leaving the canal in Egypt's hands in the next
year. At Port Said, Egypt, ground
is broken for the Suez Canal, an artificial waterway intended to stretch
162 km across the isthmus of Suez and connect the Mediterranean and
the Red seas. Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French diplomat who organized
the colossal undertaking, delivered the pickax blow that inaugurated
construction. Artificial canals have been built on the Suez region,
which connects the continents of Asia and Africa, since ancient times.
Under the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt, a channel connected the Bitter
Lakes to the Red Sea, and a canal reached northward from Lake Timsah
as far as the Nile River. These canals fell into disrepair or were
intentionally destroyed for military reasons. As early as the 15th
century, Europeans speculated about building a canal across the Suez,
which would allow traders to sail from the Mediterranean to the Indian
Ocean via the Red Sea, rather than having to sail the great distance
around Africa's Cape of Good Hope. The first serious survey of the
isthmus occurred during the French occupation of Egypt at the end
of the 18th century, and General Napoleon Bonaparte personally inspected
the remains of an ancient canal. France made further studies for a
canal, and in 1854 Ferdinand de Lesseps, the former French consul
to Cairo, secured an agreement with the Ottoman governor of Egypt
to build a canal. An international team of engineers drew up a construction
plan, and in 1856 the Suez Canal Company was formed and granted the
right to operate the canal for 99 years after completion of the work.
Construction began in April
1859, and at first digging was done by hand with picks and shovels
wielded by forced laborers. Later, European workers with dredgers
and steam shovels arrived. Labor disputes and a cholera epidemic slowed
construction, and the Suez Canal was not completed until 1869 
four years behind schedule. On 17 November 1869, the Suez Canal
was officially inaugurated in an elaborate ceremony attended by French
Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III. Ferdinand de Lesseps would
later attempt, unsuccessfully, to build a canal across the Isthmus
of Panama. He died in 1894. When it opened, the Suez Canal was only
8 meters deep, 22 meters wide at the bottom, and 60 to 90 meters wide
at the surface. Consequently, fewer than 500 ships navigated it in
its first full year of operation. Major improvements began in 1876,
however, and the canal soon grew into the one of the world's most
heavily traveled shipping lanes. In 1875, Great Britain became the
largest shareholder in the Suez Canal Company when it bought up the
stock of the new Ottoman governor of Egypt.
Seven years later, in 1882, Britain invaded Egypt, beginning a long
occupation of the country. The Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936 made
Egypt virtually independent, but Britain reserved rights for the protection
of the canal. After World War II, Egypt pressed for evacuation of
British troops from the Suez Canal Zone, and in July 1956 Egyptian
President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the canal, hoping to charge
tolls that would pay for construction of a massive dam on the Nile
River. In response, Israel invaded in late October, and British and
French troops landed in early November, occupying the canal zone.
Under pressure from the United Nations, Britain and France withdrew
in December, and Israeli forces departed in March 1957. That month,
Egypt took control of the canal and reopened it to commercial shipping.
Ten years later, Egypt shut down the canal again following the Six
Day War and Israel's occupation of the Sinai peninsula. For the next
eight years, the Suez Canal, which separates the Sinai from the rest
of Egypt, existed as the front line between the Egyptian and Israeli
armies. In 1975, Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat reopened the Suez
Canal as a gesture of peace after talks with Israel. Today, an average
of 50 ships navigate the canal daily, carrying more than 300 million
tons of goods a year.

2006
Eleven persons including a woman suicide bomber of the Tamil Tigers,
in Colombo, attacking the car of Sri Lanka's army chief, Sarath Fonseka,
who is critically injured; five of his bodyguards are among the dead. 26
others are also injured. — (060425)2005 Ryujiro Takami, 23, and more than 100 others aboard
a train of which 5 of the 7 cars derail in a curve of the track, in the
Amagasaki suburb of Osaka, Japan. The front 2 of the derailed cars collide
with an apartment building 6 meters from the track. Some 400 of the 580
persons on the train are injured. The safe speed limit in the curve is 70
km/h, half of the probable speed of the train, 90 seconds behind schedule
due to Takami, the engineer, overshooting a station and having to back up.
He was probably afraid of being punished for being late. He had been hounded
for 13 days by superiors for a previous mistake during his 11 months on
the job..

2004 Four Iraqi children, aged about
12, when US troops fire at a rejoicing group of children from a nearby school
and of passersby [photo >] surrounding a Humvee (HMMWV
= High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, diesel-powered US military
vehicle that replaced the smaller jeep since at most 1982) which was burning
after the explosion of a roadside bomb.

2004 A bystander,
by a hand grenade thrown at Mehbooba Mufti, president of pro-India
People's Democratic Party, the ruling puppet party in Indian-occupied Kashmir,
after her speech at an election rally in the village Khul. She is the daughter
of Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, the state's chief minister, and escapes unhurt,
but 7 other bystanders are injured. Kashmir's independentists, some of which
are terrorists, are boycotting India's parliamentary elections, which are
being held in four phases in different constituencies, “Jammu &
Kashmir” being the only state in which the elections are spread out
between all four dates: 20 April, 26 April, 05 May, and 10 May 2004. [see
Election Commission
of India]

2004 The mother and wife of Ghulam
Hassan, stabbed by unknowns who break into their home in village Ajas, Indian-occupied
Kashmir. Hassan is a turncoat independentist now a collaborator with the
Indian army.

2004 At least 10 persons in street
fights between Muslim and Christian youth gangs, at which police fire, in
Ambon, capital of the province of Maluku islands, Indonesia, after about
12 members of the region's small Christian separatist movement parade through
Ambon on the 54th anniversary of a failed independence attempt. More than
50 persons are wounded. More than 9000 persons were killed in the Malukus
between 1991 and 2001 in fighting between Muslims and Christians that attracted
Islamic militants from all over Southeast Asia. A government sponsored peace
pact was signed in 2002, but sporadic violence has continued and but South
Maluku's two million people, evenly divided between Muslims and Christians,
now live in separate communities.

2003 Lynn
Chadwick, born on 24 November 1914, British sculptor of expressionistic,
figurative works in welded iron and bronze. — LINKS

2003
Israeli Sgt. Lior Eliyakov, 21 [< photo],
of the Duchifat infantry unit, by the accidental firing of the gun of the
soldier with him, as the two get out of their jeep upon returning from patrol,
north of Ramallah.

2002: 12 women worshippers,
by a bomb exploding late in the evening in the women's section of a Shiite
mosque in Bukker, Punjab, Pakistan.

2001 Ramadan Azzam,
31, Samir Zurub, 32, Saadi Dabas, 35, Yasser Dabas, 16, by Israeli
remote control bomb, near the Rafiah border crossing with Egypt in the Gaza
Strip, in the night. Six others are injured.. Azzam was head of the "Popular
Resistance Committees," an organization of the Fatah believed to be responsible
for some of the mortar firing against Israeli targets. Zurub and Dabas were
members of the Palestinian security forces. Dabas was a civilian.

^
2001 Sedat Karakurt, and Erdogan
Guler, from hunger strike protesting Turkish prison
conditions. Sedat Karakurt, 25,
dies in a hospital in the northwest city of Edirne early in the day
after an intermittent hunger strike lasting 177 days. He was a member
of the outlawed Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front.
Erdogan Guler, 29, dies at his home
in the Aegean port city of Izmir. He was not a prisoner but had been
on a sympathy hunger strike for 159 days,
Some 250 Turkish prison inmates and many of their relatives have been
fasting for months to protest their transfer from large wards to new
prisons where cells house one or three inmates. The prisoners say
the new system leaves them vulnerable to beatings from guards. The
Turkish government says that it is to prevent prison riots.

2001 Iris Lynch, 65, by killer bees, as she was cleaning
her yard in Golden Grove village, east of Georgetown, Guyana.

^2001 Siv Hong, 4, eaten
by crocodiles.
She fell into her grandfather's crocodile pond while trying to retrieve
an item of clothing which she had dropped from a bridge.The grandfather,
Kart Lim, 52, jumped in to try to save her and was also attacked by
the crocodiles. A neighbor jumped in with a stick to rescue him. This
in Cambodia's Kompong Thom province north of Phnom Penh. Lim raises
some 40 crocodiles, for their skins which are used to make items such
as boots and bags.

^1915 The first
dead of the Battle of Gallipoli.
After a vain attempt in February and March 1915 to force the 61-km-long
Dardanelles Straits by naval bombardment alone, landings began on
the Gallipoli Peninsula at two places early in the day: at Cape Helles,
by the 29th British and Royal Naval divisions, at beaches by ANZAC
(Australian and New Zealand) troops. A French brigade lands on the
Anatolian coast opposite, at Kum Kale, but is later withdrawn.
Small beachheads are secured with difficulty,
the troops at ANZAC being held up by Turkish reinforcements under
the redoubtable Mustafa Kemal, later to became famous as Atatürk [1881
– 10 Nov 1938]. Despite large
British and Dominion reinforcements over the following months, little
progress would be made. Altogether, the equivalent of some 16 British,
Australian, New Zealand, Indian, and French divisions took part in
the campaign. The campaign would be abandoned and the evacuation of
the Allied troops completed by 09 January 1916, after 213'980 British
Commonwealth casualties.

1898 Marc Louis Benjamin Vautier I, Swiss artist born on
27 April 1829. 1892 William Bradford, US painter and
photographer born on 30 April 1823.  MORE
ON BRADFORD AT ART 4 APRIL
with links to images.1874 Octave Nicolas François Tassaert,
French artist born on 26 July 1800.1870 Daniel Maclise,
Irish painter born on 25 January 1806.  MORE
ON MACLISE AT ART 4 APRIL
with links to images. 1840
Siméon-Denis Poisson, French mathematician born on 21
June 1781. His most important contributions were a series of papers on definite
integrals and his advances in Fourier series. This work was the foundation
of later work in this area by Dirichlet
[13 Feb 1805 – 05 May 1859] and Riemann
[17 Sep 1826 – 20 Jul 1866]. In Recherchés sur la probabilité
des jugements en matière criminelle et matière civile (1837) the Poisson
distribution first appears. The Poisson distribution describes the probability
that a random event will occur in a time or space interval under the conditions
that the probability of the event occurring is very small, but the number
of trials is very large so that the event actually occurs a few times. Poisson
also introduced the expression “law of large numbers”. Poisson
held that “Life is good for only two things, discovering mathematics
and teaching mathematics.”

1989
Gedhun Choeki Nyima, whose father is Konchok Phuntsog, and mother
Dechen Chodon, of Lhari district in Nagchu, Tibet. On 14 May 1995 he would
be recognized by the Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of Panchen Rinpoche
(the Panchen Lama) and given by the Dalai Lama the name
of "Tenzin Gedhun Yeshe Thrinley Phuntsog Pal Sangpo". The Chinese authorities
take him away and in November 1995 appoint their own choice in his place
(Gyaltsen Norbu, born in 1989 in Nagchu, north of Lhasa, son of two Communists).
Chinese officials have insisted that Gedhun is studying in school and living
with his family, but many Tibetans believe he is at best under house arrest
and, at worst, dead.1961 Integrated circuit is patented
by Robert Noyce.1959 Saint Lawrence Seaway, linking
Atlantic with the Great Lakes, opens to shipping.1954
First solar battery announced by Bell Labs (NYC)1947
La dama negra, comedia de Salvador Ferrer, se estrena
en el teatro Infanta Beatriz de Madrid.1946 Vladimir
Zhirinovski, político ruso.1945 United Nations,
founded in San Francisco, by delegates from 47 countries.1929
José Ángel Valente, escritor español.1927 Corín Tellado, escritora española.1927 Albert Uderzo, dibujante francés, autor de
Astérix.
 Astérix[image >] est le héros des aventures de la bande dessinée
inventée par Albert Uderzo et René Goscinny. C’est le plus petit guerrier
du village, mais toutes les missions périlleuses lui sont confiées sans
hésitation. Il triomphe des adversaires les plus redoutables. 1921
Karel Christian Appel, Dutch Abstract
Expressionist painter.  MORE
ON APPEL AT ART 4 APRIL with
links to images.1919 La Escuela de Arquitectura y Artes
Aplicadas Bauhaus, origen de la corriente artística que
dominará el periodo de entreguerras, es fundada en Weimar por el
arquitecto alemán Walter Gropius.1918 Ella
Fitzgerald, in Newport News, Virginia. She grew up to be one
of the leading jazz singers of all time.1914 Claude Mauriac,
French novelist, journalist, and critic, who died on 22 March 1996; eldest
son of 1952 Literature Nobel laureate François Mauriac (11 Oct
1885  01 Sep 1970).1912 Federico Coullaut-Valera
y Mendigutia, escultor español.1906 William
J. Brennan Jr., Supreme Court justice (1956-90). He died on 24
July 1997.1904 María Zambrano Rodríguez,
escritora española.1903 (12 April Julian) Andrey
Nikolaevich Kolmogorov, Russian mathematician who died on 20
October 1987. He was one of the developers of probability theory. He later
used this work to study the motion of the planets and the turbulent flow
of air from a jet engine. 1900 Wolfgang
Pauli, Austrian physicist (Nobel 1945), mathematician. He died
on 15 December 1958.1887 Adrian Gösta Fabian Sandels,
Swedish artist who died on 14 August 1919. — more1879 Edwin
Bidwell Wilson, US mathematician who died on 28 December 1964.

^
1874 Guglielmo
Marconi, radio pioneer.
Marconi played a major role in the development of early radio. Born
in Bologna, Italy, he studied engineering. At age twenty, he began
experimenting with crude radio devices based on the work of Heinrich
Herz, who had first generated and transmitted radio waves. Marconi
traveled to England, where he won the attention of engineer William
Preece of the British Post Office, and Preece was able to get government
support for Marconi's work. Marconi filed a telegraphy patent in 1896,
and two years later, he transmitted wireless telegraph signals across
the Atlantic. He founded Marconi's Wireless Telegraphy Service, and
in 1900, he patented "improvements for the apparatus of wireless telegraphy."
The patent was later overturned based on previous work by Nicola Tesla
and others. In 1899, a US newspaper asked Marconi to rig two ships
with wireless telegraphs so they could transmit the results of a yacht
race. Marconi's system would later enable ships to send distress calls
and otherwise communicate with the shore. Marconi made important discoveries
about short-wave radio that formed the basis for modern long-distance
radio. In 1909, he won the Nobel Prize for Physics. He died on 20
July 1937.

1873 Howard Garis, US author of the Uncle Wiggily series
of children's stories. He died on 06 November 1962.1867 August
Eiebakke, Norwegian painter who died on 21 July 1938 — more

^1849 Christian Felix
Klein, Prussian mathematician^top^ Klein's
synthesis of geometry as the study of the properties of a space that
are invariant under a given group of transformations, known as the
Erlanger Programm,
profoundly influenced mathematical development. His works on elementary
mathematics, including Elementar mathematik von höheren standpunkte
aus (1908), reached a wide public. Of his more technical writings,
Vorlesungen über das Ikosaeder (1884) and Vorlesungen
über die Theorie der automorphen Functionen (2 vol.: 1897, 1902)
are considered outstanding. Klein died on 22 June 1925

^1831The Lion
of the West play opens in New York City.
It was the first of many plays, books,
and movies celebrating Davy Crockett. Born in 1786 in Tennessee, Crockett
grew up in a poor family that hired him out as a cattle drover at
age 12. He eventually settled in middle Tennessee, where he became
famous for his skill as a professional hunter. The forests of Tennessee
were still dense with game at that time, and Crockett once killed
105 bears in a single season. After a stint fighting Indians with
Andrew Jackson, Crockett began a career in politics, eventually becoming
a Tennessee state representative in 1821. As a state legislator, Crockett
was a strong advocate for the rights of squatters who were claiming
land on the frontier without legal permission. At the same time, the
political fortunes of his old commander, Andrew Jackson, were on the
rise. When Jackson became president in 1828, he pointed to Crockett
as a symbol of the frontier egalitarianism he believed should be adopted
throughout the nation. Politics alone, however, would not have ensured
Crockett's enduring status as an American hero. For that, only the
19th-century version of Hollywood would be adequate. In 1831, the
play The Lion of the West opened at New York City's Park Theater.
Starring the popular actor James Hackett as a legendary frontiersman
named Colonel Nimrod Wildfire, the play was a thinly disguised and
highly exaggerated account of Crockett's life. Two years later, the
play was followed by an equally larger-than-life biography, Sketches
and Eccentricities of Colonel David Crockett of West Tennessee. After
Crockett died at the Alamo in 1836, his posthumous transformation
from mortal man to mythic martyr was almost inevitable. A bogus 1836
autobiography portrayed him as a US Hercules and established many
of the tall tales that would remain forever associated with his name.
In the 20th century, Crockett's fame waned for a time, but Walt Disney
revived the legend. In 1954, Disney began producing a series of movies
and television programs featuring the actor Fess Parker as Crockett.
The series was a ratings blockbuster, and it led to the largest media-generated
commercial craze up until that time. Children across the US clamored
for coonskin caps, powder horns, books, and records so that they could
be just like their idol, Davy Crockett.

1826 Jean Baptiste Huysmans, Belgian artist who died in
1906. — more
with links to images.1824 Gustave Clarence Rodolphe
Boulanger, French painter who died in October 1888. MORE
ON BOULANGER AT ART 4 APRIL
with links to images.1807 Louis Apollinaire Sicard,
French artist who died in 1881.1734 José Andrés
Cornide de Folgueira y Saavedra, historiador español.

^
1719Robinson Crusoe
is published. Daniel Defoe's
fictional work The
Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe is published.
The book, about a shipwrecked sailor who spends 28 years on a deserted
island, is based on the experiences of shipwreck victims and in part
by the real-life adventures of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor
who spent five years on a small island (Juan Fernandez) off the coast
of South America in the early 1700s, as retold in privateer Woodes
Rogers' A Cruising Voyage Round the World: First to the South
Seas, Thence to the East Indies, and Homeward by the Cape of Good
Hope...Containing A Journal of All the Remarkable Transactions...An
Account of Alexander Selkirk's Living Alone Four Years and Four Months
on an Island (1712).[brief
Galapagos passages] Like
his hero Crusoe, Daniel Defoe was an ordinary, middle-class Englishman,
not an educated member of the nobility like most writers at the time.
Defoe established himself as a small merchant but went bankrupt in
1692 and turned to political pamphleteering to support himself. A
pamphlet he published in 1702 satirizing members of the High Church
led to his arrest and trial for seditious libel in 1703.
On 31 Jul 1703 Daniel Defoe, 43, was put in
the pillory as punishment for seditious libel, brought about by the
publication of a politically satirical pamphlet. Defoe's middle-class
father had hoped Defoe would enter the ministry, but Defoe decided
to become a merchant instead. After he went bankrupt in 1692, he turned
to political pamphleteering to support himself. A deft writer, Defoe's
pamphlets were highly effective in moving readers. His pamphlet The
Shortest Way with Dissenters was an attack on High Churchmen,
satirically written as if from the High Church point of view but extending
their arguments to the point of foolishness.
Both sides of the dispute, Dissenters and High Church alike, took
the pamphlet seriously, and both sides were outraged to learn it was
a hoax. Defoe was arrested for seditious libel in May 1703. While
awaiting his punishment, he wrote the spirited Hymn to the Pillory.
The public sympathized with Defoe and threw flowers, instead of the
customary rocks, at him while he stood in the pillory. He was sent
back to Newgate Prison, from which Robert Harley, the future Earl
of Oxford, eventually obtained his release.
Harley hired Defoe as a political writer and spy to support his own
views. To this end, Defoe set up the Review, which he edited
and wrote from 1704 to 1713. It wasn't until he was nearly 60 that
he began writing fiction. His other works include Moll
Flanders (1722) and Roxana (1724). He died in London
on 24 April 1731.
Other works by DEFOE ONLINE:

Thoughts for the day :
“Stop whining. Stop wining. Start winnning.”
"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more."
There are two great rules of life, the one general and the other particular.
The first is that everyone can, in the end, get what he wants if he only tries.
This is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is more
or less an exception to the general rule.  Samuel Butler,
English author [04 Dec 1835 – 18 Jun 1902].There are two great rules of life. The first is never
to forget the second. The second rule is ... it is... it is... Does anyone remember
the second rule?
There are two great rules of life: to count correctly.
There are two great rules of life: 1. the second rule is invalid. 
2. the first rule is valid.
There are two great rules of life: one for unruly people and the other for
ruly people.
There are two great rules of life: one for truly unruly people and the other
for untruly ruly people.
There are two great rules of life: one for those who believe that there
are two great rules of life, and a second rule for all others.
There are two great rules of life: eat or be eaten.
There are two great rules of life: be good and something will eat you.
There are two great rules of life: let sleeping dogs lie, and let lying
dogs sleep.
There are two great rules of life: birth and death.
There are two great rules of life: death and taxes.
There are two great rules of life: the rich get richer, and the poor get
poorer.
There are two great rules of life: DNA and entropy.
There are two great rules of life: live and let live.
There are two great rules of life: lead or be led.
There are two great rules of life: love and be loved.
There are two great rules of life, but who is counting?
There are two great rules of life: Do what I say, and Don't
do what I do.
There are two great rules of life: Don't ask what your country can
do for you and Ask what your country can do to you.
There are two great rules of life: Have just one great rule of life,
and Have no great rule of life.
There are two great rules of life: the ten commandments.
There are two great rules of life: love God, love everyone of God's creatures
starting with yourself but not ending there or anywhere else.
[but you may give a low priority to cockroaches and lawyers]There are two great rules of life: all of the above.
The death penalty is no more the answer to crime than abortion is the answer
for unplanned pregnancies. Death is never the answer. Catholic
Bishops of New York State, 1994. {... or than suicide is the answer for mental
or physical suffering}